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The list below shows Durham University research staff who are members of IMEMS. Click the member's name to see a more detailed biography and department.

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Emeritus Professor Richard Maber, MA, DPhil (Oxon), FRHistS

Biography

I read French and German at Wadham College, Oxford (1961-64), then after a brief spell as Junior Lecturer at Magdalen College (1965-66) I was offered a Lectureship in Durham in 1966 and have been here ever since, as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor, and now Emeritus Professor.

My principal fields of research are: (a) 17th-century intellectual history, particularly the international scholarly interchanges of the République des Lettres: I am currently engaged in the major project of editing the extensive correspondence of the French scholar, poet, and man of letters Gilles Ménage (1613-1692), for which I was awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Research Fellowship; (b) more specifically French literature, especially poetry, drama, and prose fiction; and (c) interdisciplinary 17th-century studies. My principal publications in these fields are listed below, along with articles published since 2005.

I am the founder (1985) and General Editor of the interdisciplinary journal The Seventeenth Century, now on Volume 31. The journal is currently published by Taylor & Francis Ltd. See: www.tandfonline.com/rsev .

I have supervised PhD and research MA students on a very wide range of subject-areas within the 17th century: on studies of French theatre, poetry, and correspondences, but also on topics as diverse as heraldic imagery in English poetry, English translations of French poetry, women in Jacobean drama, Algernon Sidney’s political thought, English radical theology, ghost-beliefs in early-modern England, and the marketing of English portrait prints in the later 17th century. In addition, I supervised and directed the work of c.90 students on the interdisciplinary taught MA in 17c Studies.

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; Honorary Secretary of the Society for Early Modern French Studies (SEMFS); member of the Editorial Board of the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature (NASSCFL); member of the Équipe, CORECOL, (Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin / Institut de France); and Committee member of the Thomas Harriot Seminar (early modern science and intellectual history). I was a founding member of the Conseil d'administration, and founding Vice-Président of the Centre International de Rencontres sur le 17e Siècle (1990), and in 2012 directed their Colloque International, 'La France et l'Europe du nord au XVIIe siècle', in Durham Castle. In 2007 I was Visiting Professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

I have organized and directed 25 international conferences, in the French Department, as Director of the University’s interdisciplinary Centre for 17th-Century Studies 1989-2009, and as Secretary of SEMFS since 2006.

Within the University, I am a committee member of the Friends of Palace Green Library, and Editor of the Friends’ Newsletter.

My other research interests include: i) the international diffusion of medieval travel literature: with my wife, Angela Tregoning, I have published a comparative study of the early Latin, Italian, French, German, and English versions of the voyage to China (c. 1316-1330) of Odoric of Pordenone; ii) the Diary of the Victorian curate Francis Kilvert (1840-1879), one of the most delightful and best-loved of all English diaries: I have published, also with Angela Tregoning, the first complete edition of one of only three surviving original notebooks, which is preserved in Durham University Library Special Collections; iii) Cornish language and literature, particularly of the Late Cornish period: I have published a study of the prosody and dating of a 17th-century englyn, and also a discovery of a 17th-century manuscript comparing versions of the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in Cornish, Welsh, and Breton.

Journal

1985-2016 (ongoing): The Seventeenth Century, founder and General Editor Richard Maber, published by Taylor & Francis Ltd., 4 issues a year, currently on volume 31

Indicators of Esteem

2008: Committee Member: since 1985, of the Thomas Harriot Seminar: early modern science and intellectual history.

2008: General Editor of the journal The Seventeenth Century since 1985:

2007: Fellow of the Royal Historical Society:

2007: Member of the Editorial Board of the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature (NASSCFL):

2007: Visiting Professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence:

2006: Honorary Secretary of the Society for 17th-Century French Studies: